“He”s Mr. Instant Messenger, iPod and text messaging,”” said Ben Howland, who hired Keating as a UCLA assistant in 2003.

Since his days at Seton Hall working the video room for then-coach P.J. Carlesimo, Keating has been on the cutting edge of basketball technology.

But there”s more to the Broncos” 14th coach than technological savvy. Keating, 35, has spent much of his life in the trenches learning from such masters as Carlesimo, DePaul”s Jerry Wainwright, Coastal Carolina”s Buzz Peterson and his father, Larry Keating, now senior associate athletic director at Kansas.

“It”s something I have been raised to do,”” he said Monday at an introductory news conference at the Leavey Center.

Those who know him agree.

“You didn”t have to be real smart to pick up the fact he was going to be a coach,”” said Carlesimo, now a San Antonio Spurs assistant.

Keating said he knew it by age 13.

By then he already understood the work ethic needed to succeed. After all, he spent much of his youth at summer basketball camps in New York with his father, a coach at Stone Hill and Hofstra and later Seton Hall”s athletic director.

No job was too small, no task too mundane.

At 16, Keating was a “gofer”” at the prestigious Five-Star basketball camp in New York, surrounded by future NBA and Division I college coaches. One day his father asked camp owner Will Klein how Kerry was doing.

Klein, according to his son Leigh, offered a glowing report. “He”s driving people around wherever they need to go,”” he said.

“But Kerry doesn”t have a license,”” Larry Keating replied.

“There was never a

Can”t do it,””” said Leigh Klein, now president of Five Star who worked with Keating when they were teens. “There”s always an attitude of finding a way to get it done.””

That mindset made him one of the country”s leading recruiters at UCLA where he helped the Bruins reach the Final Four two consecutive years. But those who have followed his career — which includes stops at Seton Hall, Tennessee and Wake Forest — say it also has prepared him for his head coaching debut.

“The more things that happened, the better he was”” at camp, said George Blaney, the former Seton Hall coach who is a Connecticut assistant. “He wasn”t afraid of a crisis.””

From those teen gopher years at camps Keating developed a network that remains tight to this day. One of his camp roommates, Jason Zimmerman, was named coach at Emory University on Monday.

“Kerry has touched, and been touched, by so many people in the basketball community,”” said Tommy Amaker, a former Duke star who coached at Seton Hall one year Keating was an assistant.

As much as he surrounded himself with basketball, Keating was more interested in playing baseball. His father coached his Long Island team to two Little League titles. His biggest regret, Keating said Monday, was never advancing to the Little League World Series in Williamsport.

He played basketball as a freshman at a private school on Long Island before transferring to Seton Hall Prep when the family moved to New Jersey.

Then Keating played for the Pirates as a freshman walk- on in 1989 when the team lost seven scholarship players to graduation and the pros. But once Carlesimo reloaded, Keating volunteered as an assistant coach the next season.

After graduation, he joined Wake Forest”s staff for a year, in 1993, before returning to Seton Hall to work with Blaney, and then Amaker. Keating left in 1998 to begin a three-school journey with Peterson that developed his recruiting reputation. While at Tulsa in 2000, Keating lived in Peterson”s basement and cooked for the family.

“He threw out some interesting dishes,”” Peterson recalled. “I”d tell him, ”This is great, but we”re dealing with a 2-year-old, a 4-year old and an 8-year-old. They”re not going to like this stuff.”””

It was another example of the Keating”s desire to contribute. Although his father was a prestigious athletic administrator, Keating never felt entitled to any coaching job.

“He hasn”t grown up with the Pollyanna view of the profession,”” said Wainwright, who worked with Keating at Wake Forest and in summer camps. “His age on his license isn”t the same as his maturity and respect for the game.